Attorney General Eric Holder gets 'ghetto' during hearing

Attorney General Eric Holder might not be in contempt of a Congressional hearing, but he certainly behaved contemptuously in our opinion, when he was questioned as to why his department could provide documents to terrorists and their attorneys but not congress. After verbally sparring with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Holder made a snide remark at the close of questioning.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - A heated exchange between Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and Attorney General Eric Holder on Capitol Hill on Tuesday raised eyebrows after Holder made some curious remarks during questioning.

Gohmert's line of questioning had to do with documents requested by his oversight committee from the Attorney General. Despite the outstanding request, Holder's office has only provided half-hearted responses that directed the committee to use a searchable database filled with thousands of archived documents to find the information they requested. This upset Gohmert who pointed out that four convicted terrorists and their attorneys were able to have specific documents sent to them via CD disk in a timely fashion while his office was directed to a search engine.

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When Gohmert broached the subject of contempt and suggested that perhaps the Attorney General and his staff had little concern about being charged with contempt, Holder interrupted and delivered a scathing rebuttal, saying "you don't want to go there, buddy."

Holder then emphasized that he and his staff were very concerned about contempt.

But if so, then why the combative tone, and more importantly, why can't he answer the question, which is, why can his office provide documents to terrorists but not Congress?

At the end of Gohmert's time, Holder made one final remark, "Good luck with your asparagus."

The disrespectful comment refers to a mistake of speech made by Gohmert last year when he said, "don't cast aspersions on my asparagus." It was a slip in speech, but it has since become a joke around the halls of Congress.

Although the reference to asparagus is intended as a ribbing comment about Capitol Hill, a Congressional hearing is no place for ribbing. Nor it is any place for "buddy" and "you don't want to go there." That kind of speech belongs on the street, not in the halls of Congress where our politics are on full public display for the world to see.

Holder spoke contemptuously to the Representative and disrespected the panel. More importantly, he has not yet complied with reasonable requests for information, which hints at obstruction. What a shame that the highest law enforcement officer in our land, short of the President himself, is flippant and colloquial, and utterly non-compliant in the face of the solemn business of our government.

Thanks to this attitude, we still don't know why hundreds of Mexican citizens lie dead and who or what went wrong to allow the tragedy.

That's where we want to go.

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